How to Use hokey in a Sentence

hokey

adjective
  • She gave us some hokey excuse for being late.
  • So, what was the key to it not being hokey?
    — Chris O'Falt, IndieWire, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Nothing hokey or new-agey about it, just a voice guiding you.
    — Molly Kimball, NOLA.com, 6 Mar. 2018
  • There also was a hokey cat meme meant to attract high school students.
    — Becky Bohrer, Anchorage Daily News, 15 Aug. 2020
  • The achilles heel of the series was what now seems like hokey special effects.
    — Jim Clash, Forbes.com, 7 Aug. 2025
  • Poke isn’t pronounced like something one does with a stick, or as in doing the hokey pokey.
    — Julie Jargon, WSJ, 15 Sep. 2017
  • To an outside ear, these sound too hokey to be the basis for fervent belief.
    — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2019
  • The story lacked depth, the thinking went; the actors were too young and the sets and costumes too hokey.
    — Zachary Pincus-Roth, Washington Post, 8 Feb. 2024
  • If several of the tricks feel original, nearly all of them feel hokey.
    — Alexis Soloski, New York Times, 26 June 2018
  • The cynic in me found the vision hokey; the dreamer in me would have liked to disappear with them.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 24 June 2018
  • Sometimes the biggest challenge is a genre bias — to watch a show that looks unbearably hokey.
    — Hank Stuever, Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2019
  • There will also be live music, limbo, hokey pokey and races, according to the event page.
    — Briana Rice, Cincinnati.com, 28 Feb. 2020
  • Nobody seems to think the interruption is hokey or contrived.
    — Doug Struck, The Christian Science Monitor, 25 Aug. 2017
  • This might sound hokey, but working on a giant jigsaw puzzle together comes to mind.
    — Amy Dickinson, chicagotribune.com, 23 Dec. 2017
  • To modern readers, the silver age comics of the early Marvel era may read as kind of hokey.
    — Joe George, Men's Health, 16 Feb. 2023
  • No, the bands don’t play any hokey concessions theme songs or act out the trailers for coming attractions.
    — Dylan Owens, The Know, 1 May 2017
  • After the hokey show last year, the Academy this time at least tries to capture the Zen of the movie year.
    — Bill Wyman, Vulture, 28 Feb. 2025
  • Keoghan brings out a hokey elimination totem — a giant time clock where the losing contestants must punch out each week.
    — Washington Post, 7 July 2020
  • Doing the hokey-kochy In part, that is because the left is almost as beholden to rich people as the right.
    — The Economist, 29 Aug. 2019
  • In a less convincing performance, Guth’s goth staging might quickly start to look hokey.
    — Justin Davidson, Vulture, 30 Apr. 2025
  • Like some hokey primetime plot, Barry Diller's quest for media moguldom needed a third act.
    — Wired Staff, WIRED, 1 Dec. 1997
  • If the idea of self-compassion feels uncomfortable or even hokey, take that as a cue to explore why—maybe in the pages of your journal.
    — Anna Borges, SELF, 9 Sep. 2024
  • Just click play on the incredibly hokey music video above and remember — good friends stick together through thick and thin.
    — Christie D’zurillastaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 9 Aug. 2022
  • After an awesomely hokey prologue that deprives Det.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 28 Oct. 2025
  • Kanye gives you the hokey wholesomeness of a youth pastor and splices in the lurid, honest, reckless energy of a divorced dad in the club.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 2 Sep. 2021
  • Things that go bump in the night so efficiently on a big screen often look hokey and overly theatrical when designed to occur live.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2019
  • This slogan, however, as experienced by bankers on the ground such as Hambek, was more hard-core than hokey.
    — Bethany McLean, The Hive, 19 June 2017
  • The rink is a favorite of area students and made headlines in 2015 for being the place where police killed the hokey pokey.
    — Jameelah Nasheed, Teen Vogue, 17 July 2018
  • Eventually, after she was done, there were some inserts done which look kind of hokey because the angles are a little off, but some of it’s in the movie.
    — Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 6 May 2024
  • Six years before this drama unfolded, Beyoncé was on the other side of the awards-show hokey-pokey.
    — Paul Grein, Billboard, 19 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hokey.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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